Over fifteen years ago, I arrived at the Redwater family’s ranch in my old, sand-colored pickup truck. It broke down right out front of their house in the middle of the night and the pouring rain. The car made no sounds announcing its imminent death, it had rolled on without any issues whatsoever until it simply gave up on me. I got out and immediately noticed a man rounding the corner and walking towards me across the yard. All I could make out of him at first was the tiny gleam of a cigarette steadfastly braving the weather.
“You alright, ma’am?” he called out. I remember thinking his voice was pleasant, even though it was difficult to understand over the rain and the thunderclaps in the distance.
“I’m good,” I shouted back at him. “But my ride isn’t.”
“Yeah, I see that.” He was finally close enough so we didn’t have to yell anymore. “You need to call anybody?”
“Nope. Is there a filling station or something around?”
“Ma’am, there ain’t nothing out here except us and our animals. You know, I can see what I can do about this if you want me to. I’m alright with cars.”
“Really? Like, right now?”
“Sure.”
“It’s raining,” I remarked.
“Yeah, I noticed,” he replied with a chuckle. “It’s just a little water, I’ll survive.”
“Isn’t there someplace where I could wait this out? I don’t wanna sit down in the car again, I’ll get the seats all drenched. You don’t have to take me into your home or anything, just… anything with a roof will do. I’m already wet as all hell.”
“Why, ma’am, you’ve only just met me.”
His face was still lying in the darkness, but I stared up at it with wide eyes nonetheless. Then we both started laughing.
“Come on,” he said, giving me a pat on the shoulder and directing me to a rundown shed a little off to the side from the house. It was lacking a door entirely and there was nothing stored inside except for a few thrown-together items on a shelf on the wall, but at least it was dry and bore some semblance of warmth.
“Okay, let’s see…” The friendly stranger reached up to rummage around on the shelf only to discover a small towel with a pleased grunt. He handed it to me and I hurriedly dried myself off before giving it back to him. “Where are you from? People don’t come through here all that often.”
“I’m from further down south.”
“Further than this?” he asked with a grin.
“I guess.”
“Well, where do you live?”
“In that car that just broke down on me.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“No harm done,” I muttered.
“So you were just passing through without anywhere to go?”
“Yes, pretty much,” I admitted, scratching the back of my neck uncomfortably.
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop bothering you.” He sighed and took a lighter out of his pocket. “We’ll be in here for a few so I’ll just let you see my face now. Best do it now so I won’t startle you later on.”
It felt like a warning. I sat down on the ground with my legs crossed, getting comfortable, and nodded. “Sure?”
A small but unusually bright flame illuminated the space I had blindly been talking to before. There was a sizable dent in the man’s upper right cheek with deep scars extending from it all over the side of his face. The skin was overlapping in places, like it was bunched together, and even though it had obviously healed up a long time ago, it was still red and blue-ish, especially around the eye. With how lazily it sat in its socket, not moving to follow me as I leaned to the side, I doubted he could see out of it. It wasn’t like he looked bad though or anything. It was just a wound, after all.
“Why’d you think this’d be such a big shock?” I inquired.
“Because it’s creepy?”
“Who told you that?”
He grunted and the light went off. “No matter. What’s your name?”
“Lilja.”
“That’s pretty. Sounds kinda… Viking-like, I dunno.”
“I guess it is. My dad’s Swedish, so that’s kinda where I got that from. So who are you? And where are we, for that matter?”
“I’m Lorne. And you’re on Redwater property. That’s, uh, my folks. And you’re on our ranch.” He held out his hand to me and I shook it. It was warm despite the clammy rain that had softened it up.
Lorne seemed agreeable enough, just incredibly awkward. I could basically feel the discomfort he was oozing in my presence. I figured he wasn’t used to talking to people outside his own, presumably small radius. I also took note of the way his demeanor had changed once there were walls around him. Outside, he’d come off as confident, heartened and unaffected by the darkness and the storm, but in here, confined in this small space with only myself, he shifted his weight on his feet and nervously fidgeted with his sleeves. That, paired with his reluctant sense of duty to show me the deformation of his face, made me feel like he was quite self-conscious. I thought it was a shame, considering how helpful and kind he’d been to me thus far.
“You said there wasn’t much else around here. What kind of ranch is this?”
Lorne hummed softly. “I guess we don’t have as many animals as we used to. We had lots of horses back when I was little. My mom was basically the heiress to the property and my dad used to do rodeo when he was young, so that’s kinda how they met. Back when my mother’s family was running the show, we also had some cattle, but just, like, a really small herd. I never even saw those cows. My dad took over when my mom’s parents passed, and he sold off all the cattle and most of the horses.”
“That’s too bad. I like horses. And cows, I guess.”
“I can show you the ones we have left in the morning if you want,” Lorne offered.
“I’d like that. What do you do now?”
“My dad’s basically a travel agent. More or less. I don’t really know how else to describe his business, but he’s running it out of his office here.”
“A travel agency? Out here? You’re shitting me.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy, I know. It works for him, though.”
I nodded, shrugging the corners of my mouth. Before I could say anything however, a loud, drawn-out noise cut through the night air and caused both of us to jump. The sound was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It resembled distorted radio chatter, but in itself, it was more like a scream. It lasted for just about ten seconds.
“The hell was that?” I gasped as I pulled myself to my feet.
Lorne stood frozen, like he was rooted to the spot. His formerly fidgety fingers had curled into fists as he stared out of the open doorway.
“Lorne?”
“Something’s coming,” he whispered. Then he spun around and abruptly shoved me back to the ground. “Get down,” he hissed. He grabbed something off one of the shelves, a large dark green tarp, and threw himself down beside me. He pulled the tarp over the both of us, covering us up entirely. “Stay very, very still,” he instructed me in a low voice. Everything around us was dark now once more. I couldn’t see his face, but I found his lower arm in the shadows and grasped his wrist. He let out a startled little gasp and I let go. I don’t know why I touched him; I guess I was simply scared and wanted something to hold on to. After that reaction however, I didn’t try again. I shut my eyes, listening intently to the sound of the pouring rain, only to pick up on something odd among it. Footsteps. Heavy, weighted, uneven. More than just one set of legs. They sounded like they originated from a very large animal. Something told me there was even more to this though.
Lorne lifted one corner of the tarp off the ground, merely a few inches, enough for us to peek through. At first, I saw nothing except the black, muddy soil and the raindrops smacking down on it. That was until the steps got closer. Just outside the shed’s open doorway, I could make out odd, twisted shapes—malformed ankles that couldn’t seem to decide on one width and abnormally large feet that looked like a mixture between those of a human and an ape. They sluggishly dragged themselves across the mushy ground, the creature they belonged to arduously lumbering towards our hiding spot. I bit my lip, trying to stay as silent as I possibly could, permitting not even a single breath to leave my lips. Lorne had more difficulties keeping quiet. I could figuratively hear his heart pounding in his chest as he shook and shivered beside me. The thing got closer and closer; I heard noises like sniffing and hissing. I squeezed my eyes shut and simply prayed it would disappear.
“Turn around, go back, turn around, go back,” I repeated in my mind over and over again like a mantra. “Turn around, go back.”
The steps faltered, then began distancing themselves from us.
“Turn around, go back.”
“I think it’s leaving,” Lorne whispered, his voice hardly more than a warm, frightened breath tickling my ear.
“Turn around, go back.”
Seconds passed, then minutes. Lorne peered out from under the tarp. “It’s gone. And the storm’s dying down. Let’s stay low for a little longer though, just in case.”
“Sure.”
A flash of lightning illuminated the sky for merely a second, and I caught a glimpse of my new acquaintance’s expression. He looked scared and shaken up, but in a calculated way. He wasn’t surprised or shocked by any of this happening. He’d seen this before. He’d seen creatures like the one we’d just encountered come and go, and he had experience in hiding from them. Something was going on with the ranch, with him, maybe his family, too.
“What was that?” I asked softly.
“I… um… look, you’d best be leaving as soon as the sun comes up. It’s not safe here. I lied before, my folks do live here with some livestock but there’s more, there’s…” His voice broke. “We’re not alone out here,” he finally confessed. “That thing you just saw, there’s more where that came from and some are hostile—not all of them, but a few, and this is where they come out.”
“Come out… of what? Where are they from?”
Lorne swallowed audibly. “I really shouldn’t be talking about this. I’ll just fix you up with a ride and send you on your way right quick, okay? This is not the place to be.”
“You’re here.”
“But you don’t have to be. Just stop asking questions you don’t wanna know the answers to, please.” There was a hint of despair in his voice.
I fell silent. We waited under that tarp on the straw-covered ground. Two people who had only just met curled up in a dark, limited space, hiding like two children beneath their blanket. Neither of us said a word the whole time. After about an hour, the rain stopped and we hesitantly came crawling out. The sun had started to climb the horizon, sending light in softly shimmering pastel hues our way. The ranch looked so innocent in the morning glow. A rustic farmhouse, a few sheds and a barn with some stables built around it, all in various states of disrepair but filled with life nonetheless.
“You seem really nice,” Lorne said quietly.
“You too,” I replied truthfully.
“I’m sorry you had to see this. And I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything else. But you’re just passing by and it’d be so much better if nothing of this came out.” He sighed deeply. “You know, it’s kinda sucky, the one time someone comes by here, one of these things comes around and drives them right off again. You must be traumatized or something.”
I merely stared up at the sun. “Sure.”
“You…” Lorne began, only to break into a mirthless chuckle. “You’re weird.”
“You too,” I responded absentmindedly, reaching up to trace an unusual cloud formation with the tip of my finger.
“Hey, I do that too, sometimes,” Lorne remarked upon noticing. “I kinda imagine drawing on the sky then.”
He seemed nervous all of a sudden. Desperate to strike up a conversation with me. I was freaking him out, I could tell.
“So, what now? Are we gonna see to that car of yours? …ma’am? Lilja?”
He filled the air with words, terrified of silence. I turned to face him. “You’ve opened a door, haven’t you?”
He froze.
“Your Dad’s a travel agent? You said so earlier. I get what you meant now. Holy shit, man. You guys are disgusting. How can you let these things in? You got any idea where they go once they enter this dimension? What about that, huh? About the people they could hurt?” I tilted my head at him. “You seem like a good guy. I kinda don’t wanna believe you’d be so careless. Who’s pulling the strings here, your father?”
Lorne was gaping at me, unable to respond at first. “You’re one of them,” he finally pressed out. “That’s why the other one didn’t attack us, isn’t it?” He took a step closer. “I’ve never seen one like you. I thought… I thought you were normal. You look just like a human. Are you something special? Are you a god or something? I heard of deities from other worlds that cross the veil to—”
“No. I’m not. I’m nothing. Just stop, stop what you’re doing here!”
“I can’t, you—you don’t get it!” Lorne started proceeding towards me, and suddenly, there was a very strange look on his face. I glanced down at his hands. They seemed so large all of a sudden.
“Stop, don’t come any closer,” I shakily called out.
He merely shook his head. “Stay, you… you gotta stay. Please. Goddess. Help me.” He reached out to touch me, my shoulder maybe. I shrunk back, then turned to run. I didn’t know where I was going, I just had to get away from Lorne.
“Stay!” he cried out. “Please! I’m not gonna hurt you!”
I simply ran, willing my feet to match the pace of the beating of my heart. I could hear him follow me, but I didn’t dare look behind me.
“Please!” I heard him yell.
And then there was a gunshot. He screamed, and I fell to the ground.
| [Part 3 | Stormchasing](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/w9d95f/strange_things_happen_on_the_redwater_familys/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) |